As I may have mentioned in an earlier post, this month it is Dinovember! Our dinosaurs have been coming out to play most evenings (apart from when Small Child forgets to let them out of their box before he goes to bed!), and Small Child is clearly feeling quite inspired by them, with extra imaginative play happening all over the place. Yesterday we found that they had broken into Small Child’s treasure chest (hidden carefully behind the sofa by Small Child, but those dinosaurs don’t miss a thing!) and the day before they were playing pirates in a boat that Small Child and I recently made from a giant cardboard box. Dinovember has inspired some special dinosaur themed lunches too of course, so today I’m going to share a couple that I made last week.
First up is a lunch made in our Laptop Lunches bento box. I had some leftover brown rice to use up, and I also wanted to incorporate one of our fun dinosaur shaped silicone moulds into the lunch, so I was delighted when the idea came to me of filling the mould with the rice and popping it into the box with the design facing upwards so that Small Child could see it. I filled up the space around the dinosaur with chopped raw red pepper, cucumber and green grapes – the idea being that Small Child could pull the dinosaur up to release the rice, then stir it all together to make a rice salad. I did explain this to him before packing the lunchbox in his lunch bag, and he said it worked well, hurrah! On the side he had chicken slices, rolled and skewered on a dinosaur cupcake pick, chopped dragon fruit (a new food find for us, and a massive hit with Small Child!), also decorated with dinosaur picks, and some organic natural yoghurt, topped with some dinosaur shaped sprinkles. Small Child at all of this lunch and seemed to have really enjoyed it!
The second dinosaur lunch I’m sharing with you today was made in our green Yumbox. I started off this lunch by making dinosaur shaped tortilla crisps, which I sprinkled with some mixed herbs before baking. I used this set of dinosaur cookie cutters to cut out the shapes and was pleased to find they fitted perfectly in the Yumbox compartment! I also packed some ham, rolled and skewered on a dinosaur cupcake pick, some raw carrot sticks and a mini cucumber, which I decorated by cutting the word DINO into the skin, a cut up cheese string and a mini Babybel cheese, which I turned into a dinosaur eye by cutting some of the wax off with circle cutters, and popped into a lettuce shaped silicone cup. I packed some cut up dragon fruit for dessert, decorated with another dinosaur pick, and finished the lunch off with a few ocean themed fruit jellies in the little dip well – I thought that the shell shapes made great little fossils!
I was actually running a little early for once, so I took a couple of extra minutes and decorated the outside of the Yumbox too. I did this with liquid chalk markers (the set I use can be found on Amazon UK here) which easily wash off with a damp cloth when you have finished with them. I used a stencil for the dinosaurs – my drawing skills aren’t anywhere near that good!
I’ve made quite a few dinosaur lunches over the years, including some for Dinovember last year. I’ve showcased some of them below – if you click on the individual images it will take you to the original blog posts where you can find full details of the lunches.
To see what our own dinosaurs got up to during Dinovember last year see this post, this post and this post. You can also click here to browse my Dinosaur archives, where you’ll find Dinosaur food ideas, lunches and other dinosaur fun too!
Have you let your dinosaurs out to play this Dinovember?
Grace
Disclosure: This post contains some Amazon affiliate links; I may receive commission on items purchased through the links.
Leave a Reply